[user104658]

It's just logically no type of feminism at all. Feminists have been arguing for decades against the objectification of women in the music industry (and especially in rap) and now the oh-so-progressive answer (why on earth did no one think of it before?) is "AHA, we'll do it TOO, we'll objectify ourselves AND men, and by taking ownership of it we take back the power!"...

...except that all it actually does is undo the whole original argument, because what will those in favour of the objectification of women in rap now say when people try to argue against it? "Uhh, women do it too ".

So the answer to women being objectified by men apparently was not to stop women being objectified... but to attain equality the answer was for men to be objectified by women, women to be objectified by women, and also women to be objectified by other women. And the male-objectifiers will love women objectifying women. Big win, so awesome.

Next up: solving racial inequality by taking away everyone's rights completely. Can't have enequal rights if no one has any rights, right? It's so simple... there must be some sort of catch...

[Marsh.]

Yeah, I hate when someone speaking out on something is told they're trying to "censor" everyone else. It distracts the debate to an argument nobody made.

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

Yeah, I hate when someone speaking out on something is told they're trying to "censor" everyone else. It distracts the debate to an argument nobody made.

Especially as I don't think I've seen ANYONE, even on the intywebs, try to argue that they "shouldn't be allowed" to make whatever music they want to make. It's hardly the first and nowhere near the worst example of "problematic music", the glorification of drugs/violence has been a problem in rap forever and there are plenty of other examples in other genres (glorification of depression/suicide in certain musical genres is one that springs to mind) but I don't think anything should be censored... really totally different to the discussion of what is a good idea and what message something sends. I'm happy to point out that I think WAP sends a questionable message whilst still defending their right to record & release it if they want to.

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Especially as I don't think I've seen ANYONE, even on the intywebs, try to argue that they "shouldn't be allowed" to make whatever music they want to make. It's hardly the first and nowhere near the worst example of "problematic music", the glorification of drugs/violence has been a problem in rap forever and there are plenty of other examples in other genres (glorification of depression/suicide in certain musical genres is one that springs to mind) but I don't think anything should be censored... really totally different to the discussion of what is a good idea and what message something sends. I'm happy to point out that I think WAP sends a questionable message whilst still defending their right to record & release it if they want to.

* see clarification

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

Yeah, I hate when someone speaking out on something is told they're trying to "censor" everyone else. It distracts the debate to an argument nobody made.

Ok calm down I've clarified that for you. He was trying to put a label on the content certainly. It's the boomer in me that hates the content too really but in other ways its freedom of expression and so totally the artists interpretation.

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

Ok calm down

I'm perfectly calm, I'm responding to someone else's post, which I'm allowed.

Originally Posted by Kizzy

It's the boomer in me that hates the content too really but in other ways its freedom of expression and so totally the artists interpretation.

Calm down, it is freedom of expression, a moot point though considering no one is silencing them but questioning their version of "feminism".

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

I'm perfectly calm, I'm responding to someone else's post, which I'm allowed.



Calm down, it is freedom of expression, a moot point though considering no one is silencing them but questioning their version of "feminism".

You were sniping at my comment, let's not start twisting. Only I have made reference to being censored, nobody else that post you commented on was in reply to my comment. I have attempted to make myself clear, you seem to be taking exception to my interpretation of his view... and that's fine.

I haven't suggested anyone was silenced... You've just projected that into my post.

[Tom4784]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

Yeah, I hate when someone speaking out on something is told they're trying to "censor" everyone else. It distracts the debate to an argument nobody made.

It's just a hypocritical way of silencing opinions that people can't argue against. An opinion cannot be an act of censorship towards someone else but people will make out that it is to invalidate that opinion without going to the effort of actually putting a well thought out argument against it.

Claiming censorship while looking to censor an opinion they dislike, it's grim.

[bots]

equality is equality to my mind and i'm all for discussion on the topic. I'm not of the correct generation to see anything of value in that music video, and i'm way passed the point of being shocked by commercial shock 'trash' which is how it comes across to me. Personally, i think it's the wrong emphasis to want to emulate unseemly male behaviour, it shouldn't be an aspiration, but each to their own.

[Ammi]

...this is a long article, but if anyone can bear to read it, I think it’s the best article I’ve read on the Wap song/vid...the Republican congressman, James Bradley, btw...who is mentioned...?..(...if he’s the one I googled...)...he is not pro choice but he is pro guns...



‘WAP’ Is Making People Uncomfortable Because It’s About Female Pleasure...


Unless you’re living under a rock that can’t connect to Spotify, you’ve likely heard the Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion song “WAP,” or at least the discussion around it. It’s boastful and explicit in a way that’s consistent with a lot of rap music. But what’s made it so huge immediately following its release, and what opens it up to criticism from fearful men of all political inclinations, is how candid and explicit it is about female desire.

The first time I heard “WAP,” there were lines that made me gasp. On first listen you’re likely to raise your eyebrows, or even blush a little. It’s a song that Goes There. Even its name, taken from a line that’s repeated over and over, has to be shortened to an acronym in polite conversation. “WAP” is so explicit that cleaning it up for radio play feels nearly nonsensical. The censored title, “Wet and Gushy,” feels almost more graphic than the one it’s replacing. And so many words are removed from Cardi B’s second verse that it’s mostly just verbs: “I don’t wanna [redacted], I wanna [redacted] / I wanna [redacted], I wanna [redacted] / I want you to touch [redacted] that swing in the back of my [redacted] ...”

“WAP” never takes itself too seriously, and at times its exaggerations are trying to make you laugh. But it’s also a personal, thorough and incredibly detailed account of what sexual pleasure looks and feels like. That’s something we’re used to seeing and hearing from male artists, sure. But we very rarely see it from women — and clearly, it’s still subversive enough to freak a lot of people out.

Republican congressman James Bradley said the song is “what happens when children are raised without God and without a strong father figure” and that he feels “sorry for future girls if this is their role model.” Former Republican congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine claimed the song “set the entire female gender back by 100 years.” Right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro theorized the physical response to pleasure the song describes may be bacterial vaginosis. (He got roasted on Twitter, naturally, for the apparent lack of that physical response in his own life.)

But it wasn’t just right-wing moralists who objected to “WAP.” Comedian Russell Brand, for some reason, weighed in to call the video “porn.” He said it couldn’t be liberating because it used a “template that had already been established by the former dominator,” in the same way that Margaret Thatcher is not a feminist icon “because the values that she extolled, espoused and conveyed were male values.”

The dubious comparison of “WAP” to Margaret Thatcher’s leadership aside, it’s a flawed hypothesis. As author and university lecturer Kate Lister pointed out, “the underlining premise” of Brand’s response is that enjoying sex is “exclusively for men” and “women couldn’t possibly enjoy that like they do.”

The consistent thread in all of the opposition to the song is that it’s too sexual. None of these people objected when Cardi B posed nude or when Megan Thee Stallion twerked on camera. Their sexuality wasn’t a problem when it was consumable, when their images were to there to be looked at. It crossed a line, apparently, when they became active participants: when they talked about what they liked in bed, or how it made them feel.

And of course, the fact that these are two women of colour being explicit about sex means they face even more criticism, much of it coded.

“Critiquing ‘WAP’ as degrading, dehumanizing art is a camouflage for critiquing Black womanhood as a problematic expression,” Brianna Holt wrote at Complex about the reaction to the song.

“Whether demonstration exists through the form of a protest with signs that read ‘My body, my choice’ or a colourful music video where Megan Thee Stallion is seen doing the splits in a tiger-print bodysuit, all women deserve to express their sexuality how they choose, without the criticism from others... Black women shaking their butts and describing their sex life in music is not what sets Black women back; it’s the people who justify harm toward us because of these actions.”

The whole thing is reminiscent of Bill O’Reilly slamming “Partition,” one of many stunning tracks from Beyoncé’s surprise self-titled 2013 album, and one that’s also about enjoying sex (albeit in a much less graphic way than “WAP”). According to O’Reilly, who has been accused of sexual harassment, “Partition” was irresponsible because “teenage girls look up to Beyoncé, particularly girls of colour,” and the song ignored the “devastation” of “unwanted pregnancies” and “fractured families.”

At the time the album was released, Beyoncé was married and had recently had her first child. By conservative pundit logic, being in a heterosexual marriage is essentially the only time sex is permitted. But to hear O’Reilly explain it, even a married mother enjoying sex with her husband was not okay. He framed female desire as dangerous, a force that could be destructive to society.

The idea that a song about women having pleasurable sex could be harmful to teenage girls is puzzling, even when it isn’t coming from a middle-aged man. Like a lot of art that’s clearly and specifically about sex, no, “WAP” and “Partition” aren’t appropriate for young kids.

But it’s actually really healthy to offer teenage girls a conversation about sex that’s squarely focused on their own pleasure. That’s something that was hard to find when I was a teenager in the early and mid-2000s. The charts were dominated by sexy virgins who bared metres of midriff and excessive cleavage but spoke about preserving their virginity, letting girls know it was important to be sexually desirable but not to actually have any desires themselves.

There was also the casual misogyny of the pop-punk and emo bands I loved, where women were casually referred to as “*****s” and male singers who would later be revealed to have inappropriate relationships with underage fans fantasized about girlfriends who dumped them dying violently.

Sure, there was the odd exception. But songs that not only thought about an honest female perspective, let alone considered what female desire felt like, were few and far between. Growing up in a culture so heteronormatively focused on “pleasing your man,” teen girls could definitely benefit from more of that.

What’s new about “WAP” isn’t that it’s sexually graphic. There wasn’t a similar moral panic around The Weeknd’s “Initiation,” or Lil’ Wayne “Lollipop,” or George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” The fact that so many people are scandalized by “WAP” is a clear indication of just how much we need it.

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/wap-cardi-...213447804.html

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Ammi

Sure, there was the odd exception. But songs that not only thought about an honest female perspective, let alone considered what female desire felt like, were few and far between. Growing up in a culture so heteronormatively focused on “pleasing your man,” teen girls could definitely benefit from more of that.

What’s new about “WAP” isn’t that it’s sexually graphic. There wasn’t a similar moral panic around The Weeknd’s “Initiation,” or Lil’ Wayne “Lollipop,” or George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” The fact that so many people are scandalized by “WAP” is a clear indication of just how much we need it.

Counter-opinion; people don't voice a problem with the other songs because people are, tediously, just so used to men doing it. That doesn't mean they should do it, or make it a good idea, or mean that the better option isn't "everyone actually maybe do it less or not at all" rather than "Wheeee let's all do it".

As for the first paragraph; I think they missed the part where half of the song that apparently isn't about "heteronormatively pleasing your man" is about women "enjoying" getting throat-****ed until they choke... in an environment where support services for female victims of sexual violence are already FULL of girls and young women who have had unpleasant encounters with inexperienced boys who think that's normal and enjoyable for the girl because of how it's represented in actual porn. Do we REALLY need mainstream pop music reinforcing the idea that, unless they're somehow sexually repressed, women enjoy balls slapping their chins until they vomit? Is... is that feminism? If so, I think I really have missed the progressive boat. I don't have much desire to catch the next one .

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Dezzy

It's just a hypocritical way of silencing opinions that people can't argue against. An opinion cannot be an act of censorship towards someone else but people will make out that it is to invalidate that opinion without going to the effort of actually putting a well thought out argument against it.

Claiming censorship while looking to censor an opinion they dislike, it's grim.

Another hung up on the word censor...nobody has censored anyone, I made reference to that and then changed my post.

[Marsh.]

*sighs*

Originally Posted by Kizzy

You were sniping at my comment, let's not start twisting. Only I have made reference to being censored, nobody else that post you commented on was in reply to my comment.

TS quoted my post and made a comment on being censored and said...

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I don't think he's trying to censor anyone. I do get some of the criticism of Brand in terms of that - although he has clearly put a lot of work into becoming a different person - he still is clearly laden down with shame-triggers that mean he shies away from bringing the murkier elements of his past into the discussion of things like this. The irony being that more openly talking about his "womanizing" days, and discovering the error in them, would actually lend weight to his argument rather than diminish it. He does talk about his past as substances-addict quite extensively when he's talking about drugs, but "goes there" far less with his.. umm... approach to relationships. Maybe something that will come in time.

Which I then responded to.

I made both posts before you replied to the first one. One in response to you, one in response to TS around the same point. But, yeah, I twisted it.

A discussion you started about whether Russell Brand's debate was in anyway linked to censorship or calling for it. We all agree he's not. Moving on.

[Kizzy]

I was the first person to mention the phrase censor in the thread.
You said ' how is he attempting to censor it'?
I agreed it wasn't the best way to describe his take and amended my point. Not once did I mention anyone being silenced so that point is moot as it bears no relevance to any of my comments here.

It's my opinion that in questioning their version of feminism that's challenging their freedom of expression, as he's projecting his own warped perception of feminism by terming his interpretation 'porn'

[Ammi]

...yeah, I am atm of similar thought to Kizzy...I mean, I like Russell, but saying it was erotica was how he sees it and how he is seeing the ladies ..and I think he said something along the lines of them looking lovely or pretty as well...he’s not seeing them as whole and entire people, he’s only seeing ‘sex’ and I think that’s a huge issue with how females can often be seen and he’s just ‘bought into that’ with what he’s saying...which is quite disappointing...you can’t really give a message that it does feminism no favours’...while doing feminism no favours with what you say....I mean, ‘mansplaining feminism’ is fine, I don’t have any issues with it personally...but it has to be an ally, in my own opinion...and I didn’t see that with Russell and his public opinion...

[Ammi]

...anyways, that’s it really...I just don’t have so much to say atm about this song and vid because I still haven’t given it much thought...(...it’s quite a catchy tune though, I have to say...)...

[Nicky91]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...anyways, that’s it really...I just don’t have so much to say atm about this song and vid because I still haven’t given it much thought...(...it’s quite a catchy tune though, I have to say...)...

yeah but they are now ended by the number one music critic (with all his music experience/expertise) Russell Brand

i mean the only thing what comes close to his music experience is his 2 years of marriage to Katy Perry


also LOL at Brand's personal information

Brand has been said to dress in a "flamboyant bohemian fashion"[159] and has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder.[160][161] He also suffered from bulimia,[162] pornography addiction,[163] and experienced a period of self-harming.[164] Brand has described the concept of fame "like ashes" in his mouth.

source: russell's wikipedia page

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Nicky91

yeah but they are now ended by the number one music critic (with all his music experience/expertise) Russell Brand

i mean the only thing what comes close to his music experience is his 2 years of marriage to Katy Perry


also LOL at Brand's personal information



source: russell's wikipedia page

Do tell us what your experience in the music industry entails since this new information that you must have been in it to have an opinion on music came to light?

[Cherie]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...anyways, that’s it really...I just don’t have so much to say atm about this song and vid because I still haven’t given it much thought...(...it’s quite a catchy tune though, I have to say...)...

Maybe you can get the kids to sing it in Assembly when you return to school

On the issue itself, it's great free publicity for them

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

I was the first person to mention the phrase censor in the thread.

Again, I know.
You accused my second comment of "sniping" at you, when I was responding to another poster. Read.

Originally Posted by Kizzy

Not once did I mention anyone being silenced so that point is moot as it bears no relevance to any of my comments here.

Never said you did. I said no one was being silenced as in "censored". Brand wasn't trying to silence anyone in giving his opinion.

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

Again, I know.
You accused my second comment of "sniping" at you, when I was responding to another poster. Read.



Never said you did. I said no one was being silenced as in "censored". Brand wasn't trying to silence anyone in giving his opinion.

Yeah yeah..

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

Yeah yeah..

Grow up Kizzy.

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

Grow up Kizzy.

I'm not the one itchin to start bitchin after a 2 day 'forum holiday'

Best stick to the topic.

[Liam-]

I don’t think anyone has actually claimed that it is feminism though? The only people who have mentioned feminism are the men offended by women enjoying their sexuality, I can’t imagine Cardi wrote this song with the idea of being the next Emmeline Pankhurst, she released a song she wanted to, with lyrics she wanted to use, like men have been doing forever, like I’ve said before, nobody cares when men rap about bitches and licking lollipops, they only get offended when women talk about sex because it’s ‘not what women do’ it’s a completely sexist mindset

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Liam-

I don’t think anyone has actually claimed that it is feminism though? The only people who have mentioned feminism are the men offended by women enjoying their sexuality, I can’t imagine Cardi wrote this song with the idea of being the next Emmeline Pankhurst, she released a song she wanted to, with lyrics she wanted to use, like men have been doing forever, like I’ve said before, nobody cares when men rap about bitches and licking lollipops, they only get offended when women talk about sex because it’s ‘not what women do’ it’s a completely sexist mindset

That's flat-out false. While the recording artists might not be branding it feminism, it IS being branded feminism from several liberal feminist corners.

The second BIB is flat out false, also. Normalisation of "porn culture sex" as something to be expected leads to increases in sexual violence - especially amougst young, inexperienced people. Throwing the idea that agrressive sex acts are actually "what girls want" - coming FROM women - is only going to make that worse. That's not to say that some don't enjoy rough sex, but far from everyone does, and those who do mostly don't want that all the time with every partner.

To be clear; the part about the women getting oral sex is not the problematic part of the song. The parts about having sex for money/reward and enjoying (expecting/demanding) aggressive deep-throating are. I mean the latter is straight up physically dangerous when dumb teenagers try to emulate it with no idea what they're doing.